Studying the wind
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson July 31, 2025
Future atmospheric scientist studies tropical cyclone wind profiles to better understand their risks
Editor’s note: Every year, hundreds of undergraduates at the University of Delaware pursue research under the guidance of a faculty mentor, especially during the summer months. Such experiences provided by UD — a nationally recognized research university — can be life-changing, introducing young scholars to a new field, perhaps even the path to a future career, as they uncover new knowledge. These spotlights offer a glimpse into their world.
Tropical cyclones create billions of dollars in damage each year, and many lives and homes are lost because of them. For instance, Hurricane Ian created $119 billion in damages in 2022, while Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused an estimated $201 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Wind speed plays a key role in the damage that a tropical cyclone will leave in its wake. Current models exist for determining tropical cyclone wind profiles over the ocean. However, there is a knowledge gap for such models as a storm moves over land, which is where it has the greatest impact.
University of Delaware junior Paige Burchell, an honors student from Jamison, Pennsylvania, is studying the wind profiles of tropical cyclones with Shuai Wang, assistant professor of meteorology and climate science, as a part of UD’s Summer Scholars program. Burchell is a double major in meteorology and climate science and applied mathematics, with minors in computer science and geography.
Q: Tell us about your work.
Burchell: I am interested in the mathematical modeling that goes into weather and climate forecasting, and my adviser Shuai Wang has a lot of experience and knowledge in this area. I find the idea of transforming the physical atmosphere into numerical data fascinating, and tropical cyclones are very complex and impactful weather events that I am learning more about through this project.
Q: Why does research like this matter?
Burchell: High winds over land can cause property damage and damage to infrastructure, such as power outages. They are also the primary cause of storm surges, pushing water from the ocean into the coast and creating flooding, while debris and fallen trees that result can create dangerous conditions on roadways. The way hurricanes — a type of tropical cyclone — are classified is not always a predictor of the damage that it will cause. Hurricanes are categorized 1-5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, based solely on their maximum one-minute sustained wind speed 10 meters above the surface. This categorization does not consider the radius over which these winds are seen, which can influence storm damage. For example, Hurricane Bret was a category 4 hurricane, but its radius of gale-force winds (at least 39 mph) was only 140 kilometers and caused an estimated $60 million in damages. Hurricane Sandy in 2012, while technically weaker as a category 3 hurricane, had a radius of gale force-winds of over 800 kilometers, as it was a much larger storm in size. Sandy caused an estimated $50 billion in damages. A better understanding of tropical cyclone wind profiles over land could contribute to an improved projection of their associated risks.
Hurricane Sandy track over ocean and land: https://capture.udel.edu/media/1_hsemrud3/
Q: What does your daily research entail?
Burchell: My days include reading and annotating literature about my topic and performing data analysis. I am working with two datasets — HWIND, which includes observational tropical cyclone wind speeds, and NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) dataset, which includes the paths of historical tropical cyclones. The data I am working with from Moody’s HWIND database contains information about various named storms that occurred in the Atlantic basin between 1998 and 2013, where the center of the storm was within 500 kilometers of some form of land. I am using DARWIN, the University’s high-performance computing system, to analyze the data and Jupyter Notebook, an open-source computer platform that enables the use of live code, to understand how the storms wind speeds change over land.
Q: What do you hope to find?
Burchell: We have models that can skillfully simulate hurricane wind profiles in an open ocean setting with no land. However, as a hurricane moves over land, its wind speeds tend to slow down. Dr. Wang and I are trying to determine if there is a scaling factor, or system, to categorize a storm’s intensity or potential impacts that can be applied to the ocean-based model to precisely model hurricane wind profiles as they move over land, and whether we can accurately quantify that wind-speed reduction in a model. The goal initially was to capture how the wind speeds are reduced over land, likely due to frictional changes. However, we have noticed that not all land behaves the same, and that small islands, large islands and continental land mass exhibit different patterns in their comparative land/ocean profiles. I am creating clusters of geographical snapshots— I have 2,000 snapshots, so far—so we can further analyze the scaling factors over different land masses.
Q: What’s the coolest thing about being involved in this project? Have you had any surprising or especially memorable experiences?
Burchell: I’ve really enjoyed seeing how content from many of my UD classes has prepared me with the skills I need to work on this project. Seminar in Climatology (GEOG452) included the reading and interpretation of scientific literature. Many of the equations I see in the literature are familiar to me from taking Analytic Geometry and Calculus C (MATH243) and Atmospheric Dynamics (GEOG423). I can navigate UD’s high-performance computing system DARWIN easily after having taken Introduction to Systems Programming (CISC210). Additionally, in Computing for Environmental Research (GEOG405) I learned about the data structures used in atmospheric research and many of the Python packages that I use every day to analyze data. Combining what I have collectively learned in these classes into a project has been incredibly rewarding.
Q: What have you discovered about yourself and your career goals as you've worked on the project?
Burchell: This project has reinforced my passion for meteorology, and it has helped me develop my programming and data analysis abilities. Of course, I have run into a couple of roadblocks in this project, and I have gotten quite frustrated at times. So, in addition to learning about meteorological research, I am also learning about perseverance and asking for help, which will serve me well in my career.
Q: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
Burchell: I enjoy cooking, pickleball, card games and long walks in nature. I have a wonderful family and an amazing group of friends that I spend a lot of meaningful time with.
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